10 int’l seed companies to attend June 5 SEEDCONNECT Conference

The National Agricultural Seeds Council, (NASC), has stated that 10 international seed companies will be attending SEEDCONECT Conference holding in Abuja from 5th June, 2018.

The Director General, Dr Philip Ojo, addressing a press conference at the headquarters of the council on Friday explained that the essence of the conference targets increase in agricultural productivity in the country and beyond with the use of quality seeds, which remain the nucleus of food security and availability.

According to him the conference will have array of stakeholders within and outside the country including donors, researchers, policy makers, development partners, academia, farmers, organisations, industrial end users, women, youths and the media.

He said issues on seeds continue to change as a result of new discoveries in genetics, improvement of exiting crop varieties, especially in areas such as biofortification, for example yellow maize for vitamin A, or quality protein maize, proVitamin A cassava, and others.

Other issues include climate change that calls for better adaptability crops, health issues requiring special diets and bio-security which calls for special control of crop introduction in order to check the introduction and transfer of certain diseases which can be introduces through seeds.

He said: “The need for standards and quality control due to the realization that agriculture brings better result when considered as business and tools for doing the business need to be of standards. Therefore, seeds standards will help practitioners in better planning, forecasting and analyses of their ventures.

“Against this background, the National Agricultural Seeds Council, NASC, in pursuant to our regulatory and seed industry coordinating responsibility in the country a 2 day SEEDCONNECT Conference and Expo with the theme; ‘The Nigerian Seed Industry: Evaluating the Seed Sector and Developing a Sustainable Framework to accelerate the Growth of the Seed Industry’. The date for this very important stakeholder convergence is June 5th to June 6th 2018.

“We are expecting 10 seed companies from other countries to , which include Monsato, Syngenta, Seedco West Africa, East-West International, and many are still enlisting for the converging. This gathering is expected to aid in the development of a holistic, pragmatic and sustainable road map capable of strengthening the Nigerian seed industry and making seeds of the highest quality available to Nigerian farmers and farmers in neighbouring countries since we are leading light in the light West Africa seed sector.

“We are doing this in partnership with the private sector because we cannot do it alone. We are ensuring that a very good environment is provided for them.”

He further stated that the convergence will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to brainstorm on innovations, success, tackling of past failures and how to implement lessons learnt, then present ongoing initiatives and knowledge, identify critical priority actions to be undertaken by stakeholders to leverage each other’s strengthens, scope, scale and operation efficiencies of the sector

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